


amends (remixed)

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 00:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14273478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: Jenny ties up some loose ends on Christmas.





	amends (remixed)

**Author's Note:**

> jenny calendar deserved a proper send-off, and narratively speaking, i always really wished she & angel could've had an actual conversation? so i wrote this real fast to sum up what i might have liked to see in the last episode we ever saw any part of jenny in.

Angel rounds the corner and sees Jenny Calendar sitting on a park bench, looking meditatively up at him. “Hey, Angel,” she says. “Can you sit for a second?”

* * *

 

Buffy starts having weird dreams about two nights before Christmas. And they’re not weird like that time she dreamed about baking cookies on a desert island with Willow and Cordelia, and Cordelia was telling her that repetition leads to rusty knees—they’re weird like she keeps on dreaming she’s walking through a cemetery with Giles, and it’s raining, and she feels like the ground’s about to give way beneath them. So she holds onto his sleeve like he’s her dad, and he holds her too like she’s the only thing keeping him from falling. She wakes up still feeling cold and rained on. She’s not really sure what to make of all that.

She doesn’t want to tell Giles, because the dreams feel intensely personal and intensely painful, and Giles doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping all that well anyway. But she’s kind of exhausted, because the dreams feel draining and a little bit magical, so at one point, she says as casually as she can, “Giles, is there anything mystical on the agenda?”

Giles looks up, surprised. “I’m sorry?”

“You know—” Buffy waves a hand vaguely, “weird demony things that might be messing up my sleep patterns or something?”

“You haven’t been sleeping well?” Giles sounds a mixture of concerned and curious. It used to be that the curiosity came first and the concern second, but Buffy guesses both of them have changed kind of a lot since she showed up in Sunnydale. “I-I suppose I can conduct some research—what, exactly, brings this up?”

“Been having weird dreams,” says Buffy, and shrugs awkwardly. She doesn’t want to say that she hasn’t seen her dad in a little over a year, or that she’s starting to wonder what it would be like if Giles wanted to go to the Ice Capades with her for her birthday.

Giles seems to pick up on the fact that Buffy doesn’t feel like sharing. “All right,” he says. “If it helps, I’ve been having—weird dreams—as well,” and there’s a note in his voice that sounds like he thinks telling her even that small thing is a little too honest for him. Buffy feels a little relieved at that; it means he’s not going to press her about her dreams, and she’s definitely not planning on pressing him about his.

* * *

 

“You’re dead,” says Angel.

Ms. Calendar inclines her head. “Yeah,” she says. “Not exactly the most ideal of circumstances to find myself in on Christmas night—”

“I’m sorry,” says Angel automatically.

Ms. Calendar gives him a strange look. “Why should you be?” she says. “Even if Angelus is still a part of you, I don’t think you ever were a part of him. Kinda the whole point of the soul thing.” She scoots over on the bench. “C’mon,” she says. “Sit. We don’t have a lot of time, and there’s some stuff I want to talk to you about.”

* * *

 

Giles dreams about Jenny. From a technical standpoint, this isn’t anything new—he’s had nightmares about finding her in his bed, daydreams about happier times, all things that never make it past his subconscious, because when Giles is awake he can’t bring himself to think about Jenny for all that long. It’s too painful, still. They both lost so much.

But Giles dreams about Jenny differently, now, dreams where they’re both sitting on her grave and she’s drinking tea. “You should have brought me coffee,” she says, “you know this stuff isn’t strong enough,” and he laughs a little and says, “I’ve missed you,” and they collide into a laughing kiss, and the tea is forgotten, and she’s flush against him, close and cold as death—

—and he wakes with the taste of Jenny on his mouth, and she lingers throughout the day.

What bothers him, though, is that it isn’t _painful_ to think about those dreams _._ Not in the same way that it is to think about Jenny herself, and somehow that’s worse than anything. Is he forgetting her, now that enough time has gone by? Has he reduced her to some idealized version of herself? Jenny would laugh at him for that—or resent him, perhaps, and it stings that he can’t remember her enough to discern which one it might be.

When Buffy brings up _dreams,_ he thinks _perhaps there’s something supernatural to this after all,_ and then feels guilty for even considering it. His own failings to grieve Jenny properly shouldn’t be pinned on a Hellmouth.

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” says Angel again.

Ms. Calendar rolls her eyes in a way that seems vaguely familiar to Angel, and it takes him a moment to realize that this is because she’d reacted the same way when Xander had come up with some ridiculous excuse for forgetting to do his homework. She really is a teacherly sort of person; not at all suited for the job she was supposed to devote her entire self to. Angel knows a lot of people like that. “You know what?” she says. “I’m putting a blanket ban on the word _sorry_ for this conversation. You’ve said it enough times. It’s my turn to talk.”

“Ms. Calendar—”

“My _turn,_ ” says Ms. Calendar, and there’s a note of tired frustration in her voice that shuts Angel up. She takes a breath. “Listen,” she says. “You have _got_ to let go of the notion that your inherent worth as a person is something that actually _means_ anything. You can’t just slap a label on a person that’s—that’s _good_ or _bad,_ there are—shades, and, and nuances—”

“Most people,” says Angel, “haven’t murdered women and children without batting an eye.”

“Most people,” says Ms. Calendar, fixing Angel with a stare, “aren’t you. No one but you is you. No one but me is me. We can sit around making lots of statements full of finality, or—we can accept that maybe we won’t ever be the amazing, morally upstanding people we want to be, and start actually trying to make a difference in the world.”

“I _am_ trying—”

“I know you are,” says Ms. Calendar. She smiles a little, and Angel sees a touch of that awkward kindness in her eyes that he’s never really been able to forget. He killed this woman. This stumbling computer science teacher who had just fallen in love, just fallen apart, just started to fight for her own redemption in a way Angel innately and intimately understands—he killed her. “But Angel—you’re not going to do any good in this world if you aren’t able to be happy.”

Angel snorts. “I’m going to do a whole lot of evil in this world if I end up too happy any time soon,” he says.

“So change the rules,” says Ms. Calendar. “Do your research. Don’t decide that the story’s over just because someone wrote a spell in a book five hundred years ago that says your soul is a curse and not a gift. Find a way to anchor the curse, because, Angel—” She breathes out, smiles a little exhaustedly. “You’re someone who can do _so much,_ ” she says. “Don’t just decide that you’re a risk and a threat and hide yourself in the shadows. The world could really use a guy like you.”

Angel looks up at her, utterly nonplussed. “I killed you,” he says. “Why—”

Ms. Calendar shrugs a little. “Honestly?” she says. “I don’t know. I guess I’m not really over being dead, and—I don’t think I can move on until I know the people I care about are doing okay.”

“And you still care about me?”

Ms. Calendar smiles slightly. “Angel,” she says. “Angelus killed me, but what gets way too lost in the mix is the fact that _you_ saved my life.”

And then she’s gone, and Angel’s sitting on a park bench all by himself. It takes him a moment to realize that she’s vanished, another moment to wonder if this was all just some kind of elaborate hallucination brought to him by some Hellmouth energy, and yet another moment to notice the scrap of paper resting where Ms. Calendar had been.

He picks it up.

 _tell them to visit my grave,_ it says.

* * *

 

What ends up happening is that Angel tells Buffy, and Buffy can’t tell Giles, because Buffy doesn’t know _how_ to tell Giles, so she just kind of wanders awkwardly down to Ms. Calendar’s grave because this seems like something she’d probably have to do sooner or later. She’s kind of avoided this particular graveyard on patrol. She doesn’t know how to pay her respects to someone who she pinned all the blame on and who ended up dying because of it. Angelus might have killed Ms. Calendar, but a part of Buffy always blames herself. Just a little.

Ms. Calendar’s not near her grave at all. She’s actually kind of meandering around with a giant bouquet of flowers, dropping them off on various tombstones. “Bought this from a supermarket,” she says, and gives Buffy an easy smile like she never died, like Buffy never threw her against a desk and tried to choke the truth out of her. “Surprising how little people pay attention when there’s money on the counter. I walked right through the wall and the cashier didn’t blink an eye.”

Buffy feels a lump in her throat.

“Oh, Buffy,” says Ms. Calendar, and her smile fades a little. “Sweetheart, you’re too young to carry this much around with you,” and she walks up to Buffy, leaving barely-there footprints in the ground. It’s kind of misty, maybe a little rainy. Buffy wishes she’d been truthful enough to tell Giles where she was going.

“I—” Buffy doesn’t know what she can possibly say.

Ms. Calendar bites her lip, very obviously considering her words carefully. Then she says, “I had something of a tendency to ignore problems. Just pretend they weren’t there, work around them, create these incredibly fragile plans that depended upon no variable changing. So when things changed—when I fell in love, when I realized my secrets couldn’t stay secret, when I stayed too late at school one night—I was never as prepared as I should have been.”

“You shouldn’t have died alone,” Buffy blurts out. Her cheeks are wet—is she crying? She hadn’t cried for Ms. Calendar, not even at the funeral. Her grief had taken the form of a dizzy, pervasive numbness that left her aching and lost. “I’m sorry you died alone. I can be sorry for that.”

“You can be sorry for that,” Ms. Calendar agrees, “but I won’t let you think that you’re responsible for what happened to me.”

“I’m the _Slayer—_ ”

“Buffy,” says Ms. Calendar, and Buffy feels the ghostly impression of cool fingers on her cheek. “You’re a kid. I’m a mostly-qualified adult who made it through college, got a job, got a house, figured most of my life out, reconfigured, got a little lost, figured things out again. No one’s responsible for me but me, and if _anyone_ else was, it was the guy who snapped my neck. We clear on that?”

Ms. Calendar’s using the Teacher-Voice. That makes Buffy laugh a little wetly. “I think I really would have liked you,” she says, “if you’d stuck around longer.” That sort of makes it sound like Ms. Calendar had gone on vacation somewhere, like she’s popped back in for a quick visit. Buffy likes making it sound that way.

“I already liked you a lot,” says Ms. Calendar, and she sounds a little sad about it. “The only thing I’m sorry for is not asking enough questions, because—” She exhales softly. “If I’d known that the curse could be lifted,” she says, “I would have told you. Immediately.”

And weirdly, Buffy believes her. Maybe it’s because the pain of losing Angel isn’t raw and fresh, maybe it’s because Ms. Calendar has a thousand reasons to be angry but she’s going around making amends instead, but whatever it is, Buffy believes her. “Okay,” she says, and smiles slightly, sadly, because she thinks she kinda gets her dream now. “Are you staying?”

“Just for tonight,” says Ms. Calendar. “But I think I have one more place to go.”

* * *

 

There’s a knock on Giles’s door. He doesn’t call “Come in,” because generally knocks come either from idiotic vampires or people who don’t know him well enough to know that the key is under the welcome mat. He continues to read.

“It’s a politeness thing,” calls Jenny’s voice, and Giles feels something shatter and break inside him. “I know where you keep your key, you idiot, you don’t have to tell me to come in, just—let me know you’re here. I’ll—I’ll go away if you don’t want me, just—let me know you’re here, Rupert.”

Giles thinks about kissing Jenny at the end of the world with his hands tied behind his back and his blood staining his shirt. He thinks about the kind of hurt he’d felt upon finding out it was Drusilla. Nothing is worth that hurt again, but—if it truly is Jenny—

“Rupert—” Jenny’s voice breaks, and then she laughs in that self-deprecating way. “God! I was doing so well at being the calm Advice Ghost for Buffy and Angel, but—I’m only ever myself with you. Do you know how goddamn frightening that is? I can be anyone for anybody else, but—I can’t be anyone but myself with you.” There’s a sniffle, then, “I think that’s what I needed you to know. I think that’s what I came back to tell you.”

And that—that isn’t something Giles would make up, or something some demon would craft. That’s the stumbling attempts at romance that only his Jenny can manage, and—god, Giles can’t move. He cannot move. He’s so afraid of opening the door and finding someone else.

“I love you so much,” says Jenny from the other side of the door. She sounds like she’s crying. “So much. I wanted so much for us.”

Giles wants to get up. Giles wants to get up and throw open the door and be reckless and unhesitating and brave, the kind of man he was back when Jenny was alive, back when Jenny made him feel like he wasn’t just a Watcher, wasn’t constrained to duty and destiny alone—

He’s crying. For the first time since that night when everything was roses and ashes and smoke, he is crying, painful, heaving sobs that make him drop his book and cover his face with his hands. It’s humiliating, crying like this, but also—cathartic, in a painful sort of way. A release of something he’d buried so determinedly that he’d let himself forget it was even there.

And that’s the sound of the key in the lock. And those are footsteps. And Giles looks up, tears forgotten.

“I’d come up with something clever to say,” says Jenny, “but—god, I don’t know how long we even _have._ ” She really is crying. Giles doesn’t think he ever saw her cry while she was alive. “I had—plans, I think, all these things I wanted to tell you—”

Giles stands up, shaky, and crosses the room, and reaches out, touching Jenny’s face. She shudders, leaning into his hand. “I love you,” he says, because he is a man with many regrets, but none weigh as heavy as the fact that Jenny Calendar never got to know how deeply and how truly he loved her.

Jenny gives him this small smile and rests her forehead against his, and it’s the small, sweet familiarity of the gesture that cuts to the bone. “And you know I love you,” she says. “So—Merry Christmas, right?”

It’s snowing outside, and Giles’s apartment is lit by the soft glow of his antique lamps as he kisses his love hello.

* * *

 

Giles comes to school the next day with this strange, sad expression on his face, and as soon as he sees Buffy he hugs her really hard. Buffy’s pretty sure she knows what went down, but she doesn’t know how to ask about it, so instead she says, “Giles, maybe you should talk to somebody about all the things that are bothering you, you know? That could be pretty good.”

Giles looks a little surprised, but then he smiles slightly. “Jenny said something to that effect last night,” he says.

That makes Buffy smile too. “Yeah?” she says, because—wow, Giles really deserves to be happy like that. Giles deserves all the good things.

“She said I’m being repressed and British and I need to get myself in order because she can’t keep on showing up every Christmas to—” Giles stops talking and goes a little pink, then mumbles something uncomfortably about how maybe his romantic life isn’t something he should be talking about with his Slayer.

“Cool,” says Buffy, and tries to pretend to be all grossed out by the thought of Giles and Ms. Calendar—you know— _together._ And—yeah, of course she _obviously_ is grossed out, but she also keeps thinking about the shy, hopeful way Ms. Calendar looked when Buffy said Giles missed her, and the way Giles hadn’t smiled all the way for months after Ms. Calendar died. She’s kind of happy that maybe they got the chance to smile together for a second. Then, casually, she says, “Angel’s doing some research. Wants to see if he can get his soul to stick around.”

“That seems like a very good idea,” says Giles, and he smiles all the way. Buffy stands on tiptoe and gives Giles another hug, because—you know what? He’s important to her, and she thinks he should know that in as many ways as she can tell him.


End file.
